Basecamp, activeCollab, and Goplan compared

UPDATE 11/18:activeCollab is no longer offered as a free project management collaboration download.

From the design, development, and product strategy company Webreakstuff comes a new contender in online project management and collaboration known as Goplan. In its newly released form, how does it stack-up against Basecamp & ActiveCollab?

Basic project packages compared

Service

Price (per month)

Basecamp (Basic)

$24

Goplan (Startup)

$20

activeCollab

$199+

All three services [at the basic level] provide support for unlimited users and a number of additional features provided to improve productivity.

Features

Basecamp

Goplan

activeCollab

# Projects

15

30

unlimited

Ad-Free

yes

yes

yes

Notes

yes

yes

yes

Blog

no

yes

no

Bug Tracking

no

yes

no

Task Management

yes

yes

yes

Security

no

256/SSL

n/a

Calendar

yes

yes

yes

Real-time Chat

yes

yes

no

Permissions

yes

yes

yes

Storage

400MB

500MB

unlimited

Registration & setup

In order to leverage any one of these services for team projects, the usual registration hoops are required. Goplan and Basecamp both provide very simple registration interfaces while activeCollab requires a little more work. It is important to note that Basecamp & Goplan are paid-for hosted solutions. In comparison, activeCollab is a self-hosted solution requiring actual server setup and database creation.

Although the challenge of the activeCollab installation is on the same level of preparing WordPress, anyone hesitant to meddle with their own servers may want to discontinue the idea of utilizing activeCollab (PHP5 required).

Creating projects

Registration requirements varied from service-to-service, each addressed the task of creating your first project with even more variance.

Basecamp: Requires a Project Name and provides the additional option of adding an existing or creating a new company. By default, all of the default features offered by Basecamp are accessibly – Messages, To-do’s, Milestones, Writeboards, Chat, and File [management].

Goplan: Goplan addresses the task a little differently requiring a Project Name, Alias (goplan.org/alias), Description, and Timezone. Afterwards, specific features can be enabled or disabled – Notes, Task Management, Calendar, Public weblog (perfect for startups wishing to create a following), Tickets, File Management, and Chat. The option of adding Project users / members is available immediately after a project is created.

ActiveCollab: Very basic in comparison to the previous two. Requiring little else other than a Project Name, standard features are enabled by default – Messages, Tasks, Milestones, Files, Tags, Forms (polling users are project status), and People (managing users and permissions). The option of adding Project users / members is available immediately after a project is created by visiting People after a project is created.

Goplan’s option of enabling or disabling specific features is a fantastic option which allows project administrators to create less overwhelming interfaces for clients. Sometimes, less is more as I have noticed while using Basecamp. Very often, clients are only interested in the basics of Messages or Milestones. By eliminating some of the features during the initial setup, the end resulting interface can be a little easier to navigate (re-enable disabled Goplan features is available by visiting Project Settings).

Adding companies & users

Project Management solutions often serve double-time as an online Rolodex for clients & companies. Basecamp, Goplan, and activeCollab each provide the functionality to serve as contact managers. Each application treats contacts differently. Basecamp functions on the premise that every contact belongs to a specific "company" (global), Goplan operates on the idea of users / members on a per project basis (individual), and activeCollab somewhere in the middle.

Adding clients or team members should not require you to leave your current project.

Of the three services, the most logical and sensible method of maintaining a usable contact database is that foundn in Basecamp. Although the other two offer basic contact management on a per project basis, none allow contacts to be accessed from multiple projects without jumping through navigation hoops. For example, while activeCollab, administrators would need to leave the Project Dashboard and enter the Administrative Panel > Clients > Add Clients. Compare this to Basecamp or Goplan which allow for adding clients or members from within the Project Dashboard.

Client interaction

All three services provide the basic tools which promote developer & client interaction. Whether through forum style messages, focused to-do lists, milestones (coerced motivation to hit deadlines), or live messaging, none of these services leave any room for excuses.

One advantage of utilizing Basecamp or Goplan over activeCollab is the added benefit of live "chat" rooms. Basecamp relies on the powerful Campfire which not only provides a secure web based chat room, but also provides an archived view and file uploading integration associated with your Basecamp file manager. Goplan, while fairly new, provides similar functionality with their own web based chat room.

File management

Basecamp & Goplan rely on Amazon’s S3 (Scalable Storage Service) for their back-end with file upload limits governed by your current subscription. For the basic plans compared in this write-up, Basecamp offers 400MB and Goplan 500MB. Because activeCollab is a self-hosted alternative, file uploads are only limited by your server space.

Note that Basecamp does allow users to point their Basecamp file manager to a personal server which would essentially remove any limitation from uploads.

Basecamp: Files served by Amazon S3. Option to redirect uploads to a personal server removing the subscription governed file upload limitation. Support for updating (revisions) of uploaded files.

Goplan: Files served by Amazon S3. Subscription limited file uploads. No support for redirecting uploads to a personal server. No option to upload revisions [at this time].

Conclusion

For individuals looking to manage projects without spending a small amount on monthly subscription costs, the less polished activeCollab application does provides the basics for managing and interacting with clients.

On the flip-side, anyone who is willing to part with a small amount through a monthly subscription recouped in an hour or less of work, definitely give Basecamp or Goplan a try. With Goplan’s recent public launch with features sure to give Basecamp a solid run, users now have more options. Which service will work for you? Give each of them a solid run-through and decide for yourself. Will you side with the proverbial favorite from 37signals – Basecamp? Or, will your business be better served by Webreakstuff’s Goplan?

On a personal note concerning the three services, I’ve moved all currently open [and plan for future] projects to be managed by Webreakstuff’s Goplan. Was this helpful? [Digg it]

Discuss - 149 Comments

I evaluated Intervals when looking at options and was thrilled with it in almost every way. The two big killers for me were:
* It doesn’t have any collaboration/communication aspect (like Messages in basecamp or whatever)
* It doesn’t have a timer widget so that you can enter your time from one simple interface; instead it has little timers scattered all over the site. I can see that being nice for some people, but not for me and my contractors.

Other than that I really liked it and was sad to not be able to use it. I settled on Central Desktop.

Paul, any time you see the pricing in “per month per member”, you should understand that those are application oriented for enterprise users. So it’s a totally different category. Having just 5 users will cost about $125/month with LiquiPplanner!! I don’t think this application even fits in this section.

Sure, they try to justify it by adding new feature, and still claim “easy to use”. In reality it’s not “easy to use”.

Does anyone have experience/recommendations on using any of these in a construction business? I’m looking for an effective way to communicate with owners and architects during construction of a project, both from the ‘office’ regarding things such as change orders and questions, to allowing the guys in the field to post progress reports and the like.

I took a few minutes to look projjex.com over and signed up for the trial. I got as far as setting up a task when I discovered that it is missing one of the most basic features of a PM tool – task description.. You only have one line for a task (so can only really enter a title) . the only way to enter a description would be to upload a document to the task. Not my idea of user-friendly. I have not searched the project further, so I can’t comment on the rest of it other than I did like the idea of basically working with everything from one screen.. but you can’t have a PM tool without task descriptions (and they need to have rich text editors too). My first glance at this tool gets a thumbs down and wil not receive a further look unless and until at least such a basic feature as described above is implemented.

In answer to your question about a PM tool for a construction project, I should mention that though I have done much touting for teamworklive.com I wouldn’t suggest that tool for you as it doesn’t cater to mobile users. Just thought I’d let you know so you could cross them off your list.

Wow this is some nice thread and discussions. I agree that there is still no best solution for a “project management tool” and i believe that hardly there will be a winner in the nearest future. But our company is trying this nich as well. Our tool is http://www.comindwork.com. I am not gona spam here waht features we offer and how cool we are 🙂 but if you are intrested in project management tools and innovation that comes with them, take a look and tell what you think.

But price per month is wrong for activeCollab. It is $199+ / year for support. Because activeCollab is not web service it is a product. You can deploy it on your own server and get total control over your information.

The PM market seems to have a comprehensive list of tools out there and its hard to tell which are the industry leaders. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Project123. Has anyone had any experience with this tool? They just ran out of their free 12 months trial but I’m going to try it now for 4 months.

You could try Planzone to compare it with those tools. This online project management tool was launched commercially two months ago, and displays a really attractive interface.
Let me know what you think about it.http://www.planzone.com

I have tried almost all the above listed tools either as a trial member or as a free user. (If trial or free offer is not availabl then I just took the tour.)

At the moment I am using ProjectPier which looks like BaseCamp. It is a fork of ActiveCollab. It has a long way to go in terms of Web 2 look and features. But it works and is a decent tool if you are looking for open source, free, self-hosted tools. I use it every day and it works fine for me.

collabtive is also open souirce and free. But it does not have granular permission system.. But if you like colorful, simple tool to manage your projects, you can have a look at it. I think it is still beta and needs a lot of features.

I really liked Copper Project. from the list. Very neat interface, powerful and had all the features I liked to have. BUt the Standard edition ($499) does not include many nice features from corporate editon which costs $1299. Too much for me. They could have included Ajax features in standard edition. I may buy it if they introduce a new package or add features to the standard edition. For now, I am not buying it.

I will continue looking for a Project Management tool and continue using ProjectPier.

Wow, this is a long thread with lots of useful information. It seems to be a PM tool to fit everyone needs. I read a post above about Collabtrak, http://www.collabtrak.com and I signed up for a free trial. My team members and my customers really like it because it’s made for us small web design firms. Does anyone else use them for tracking creative projects?